To ask for the rest of the chicken?

[startwig1982]

I recently went over to a friend's house after dinner and she and her DH had had roast chicken plus the trimmings.

While she was making cups of tea, she started to bag up the rest of the chicken and the carcass to go in the bin! There was at least half a chicken left and so I expressed my astonishment at her throwing it away.

Apparently she never keeps leftovers and always bins whatever is left, even if it's half a roast!
So I asked her if I could have it instead. She said yes but was a bit about it, but I couldn't bear all that going to waste when you could get another 2 meals out of it. So WIBU?

expressed my astonishment at her throwing it away

fine to think that, but very rude to tell her that. You are in their home, how unpleasant and rude to make judgement about them.

As someone who regularly cooks the legendary mumsnet chicken (it's like a homeopathic remedy, you keep adding stuff until the chicken is only a memory) I would have been very uncomfortable at someone throwing that much meat away.

Between family we often pass around leftovers from a roast. I.e. we'll be at DMs for Sunday lunch and she'll give me the carcass because they are going to be away for a few days so she isn't going to be able to use it.

So if it was a good friend I'd say you weren't being unreasonable. I'd be tempted to serve them something with leftover chicken next time they come around, and should they comment on how delicious it is let them know where it came from.

Just because you can afford to throw food away doesn't mean you should.

this with bells on!! We are not poverty-stricken, I'm not watching every penny when we go to the shops. We know that we are in a privileged position compared with many. It is SO wasteful and SO wrong to throw edible food in the bin just because you "don't do leftovers" or "can afford to".

As someone says on any threads about waste and rubbish - when you throw something "away" there is no away - it goes to landfill which is rapidly filling up. Hate a wasteful attitude.

i feel guilty when i throw old food out that ive forgotten about- of liteally strip a chicken to make use of it all-why do people throw half a chicken away

I'm totally at a loss how this woman chucking the remains of her chicken out rather than eating it negatively impacts others, it clearly doesn't reduce availability of chickens for other people if she chucks it rather than eats it, it doesn't clog up a land fill site, the meat will decompose.

Genuinely, how does eating it rather than throwing the remains out prevent negative impacts on others?

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have chucked it either, although I wouldn't have asked for it, and yes I think it's silly and wasteful, but I'm not getting the negative impact on the wider population.

I don't think it's weird to comment on someone throwing half a chicken away. I don't think it's weird or somehow shameful to ask for it if you can use it. Maybe the friend will think about how much she is wasting in future?

Bluntness100 One individual doing it won't make a difference but it's a case of if everyone chose that incredibly selfish attitude. It's why you can buy separate parts of the chicken separately to reduce waste. Why buy a whole chicken if you only want a breast?

Gotta love a carcass thread

I think it's fine but then again we had my cousin's adult ds living with us for a while and he used to ask for our guest lodger's leftovers to save himself the cost of a meal. Didn't bother me. Better in him than the bin.

Should have added that these were leftovers that had actually been pushed round their plate

I'd have asked.

Why waste good food.

Bluntness100

Can't you see that if everyone wasted half the chicken they bought, there would be a lot more landfill than necessary (landfills don't decompose to nothing, not in the short term anyway), more packaging than necessary would be used, more road miles/fuel used transporting about chickens that aren't going to be eaten, more food used to feed these chickens that aren't going to be eaten, more resources in processing these chickens that aren't going to be eaten, etc etc. You are incredibly short sighted if you can't see that.

Wasting food like this is socially unacceptable to any decent person. In 'the west' we are very very fortunate that most of us can afford to eat well and for all the other privileges we have (clean running water etc).

To value them so little when we are so fortunate is literally sticking two fingers up to the rest of the world who often toil in poverty to produce cheap food and consumer goods for us to treat wastefully as disposable commodities.

(OK, if the chicken was a fresh supermarket chicken, it was probably produced in the UK but if you look at chicken used by cheap fast food restaurants etc it is probably raised in awful conditions and imported from somewhere like Thailand or Brazil).

Gosh that is not weird at all. It is weird that they were going to throw it away!

If someone is throwing something away and someone else can use it and asks for it then what is the problem?

Is the bin going to go hungry?

I always mean to make stock from the chicken carcass but always forget . But I would never throw out half a chicken! I hate food waste. Agree 100% with BarbaraofSeville. I remember that Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall programme on food waste and how a street changed their habits after confronting their waste. Simple to do, just takes a bit of thought and pre-planning.

Not unreasonable at all to not waste food, but YABU if you made your friend feel uncomfortable by asking for something she was going to throw away

We have 5 greedy chickens - so I am always asking friends if I can take leftovers at the end of a night or a party.

Isnt that canabilism? Do Chickens eat other chickens?

Chickens eat other chickens

They certainly do, if they get the opportunity! (Or are very stressed - factory farms are notorious for cannabilism.)

They would also eat you, given the chance. A friend has chickens. I had a scabby ankle from slipping down a step the little blighters attacked me and homed in on my scab. Apparently they are like sharks in a feeding frenzy when they scent blood. Friend thought it was hilarious I should have sued the @rse off her.

Throwing it away is so odd!
You did right OP.

I would have pretended it was for my elderly neighbour's pet. Faces saved all round.

I would at least have asked for it "for the cat" or "for stock" - I wouldn't have said I couldn't see her waste food though. When you got it home you could have done what you saw fit with the leftovers.

barbaraofseville you are my hero, thank goodness for a voice of reason on this thread!!

Possibly a bit awkward but that's pretty disgraceful throwing that much food away. Whether it's because she won't use them or doesn't know what to do with the leftovers due to lack of knowledge....it's still pretty shocking.

I've been to friends and family who chuck all leftovers out.... I tried to stop my chin hitting the floor.

When my mum eats at ours, she always asks what I'm doing with the leftovers......checking that they won't be getting binned. They don't.

Perhaps your friend doesn't have a clue what to do with them. Maybe a suggestion from you of what she could do with them first, then if she still said she was binning them, then ask for them.

Seriously though. HALF A FUCKING CHICKEN IN TH BIN!
One chicken does us 3 adults 2 dinners, one lunch and chicken stock for soup.

Food education is seriously lacking in this country.

Happyflappy that's a bit scary. I always thought they were vegetarians due to their lack of teeth, just goes to show I guess. Mind you Octopus's have beaks and they eat fish etc and then there is the Pterodactyl.

Vegan here and I would have been horrified at someone throwing away most of a chicken. Livestock are usually deliberately overcrowded and spend short, miserable lives in living conditions that are the smallest/most crowded that the company can get away with while still calling itself 'welfare-friendly'. And why? So the company can produce as many living creatures as possible to meet the 'huge demand' for meat. Which buyers like your friend mostly throw away because they're selfish lazy twats who can't be arsed to respect the fact that a living thing died for them and are too idle to do the hard work of rendering the carcass.

My DH and kids eat meat and under the circumstances you describe I'd have asked to take them remains of that bird home for them. Poor creature.

I went to my sister's the other night. They'd had chicken and veg fajitas. I made ds a wrap for the next day minus veg then stuffed 2 with all the stuff including sour cream and salsa. We had them for lunch yesterday and they were yummy. Niece was about to put remaining wraps in the bin. I nearly fainted so I brought them home too. Ds had 2 for pack up today and I've just had the last two today. Stuffed with a 10p bargain tuna steak from Asda last night. Tasted magnificent. Can't bear waste.
Tonight we're having 10p pork chops 🙂